By My Side
by NobodyPaticularlyImportant
Summary: In a twist of fate, Nora is seriously injured protecting Ren in the events of the Volume 2 finale. When informed that Nora will never fully recover and will probably end up being unable to become a Huntress, Ren vows to do whatever he can to make sure Nora can continue her training.
1. Accident

Cinder was angry.

Angry wasn't the right word. Boiling with rage would be a more apt description.

She had invested months of planning, a small fortune's worth of dust and military equipment. Now it was all worthless because these idiots had let a thermos wielding Huntsmen, 4 children and a corgi ruin her plans. Barely more than a dozen civilians had been killed and all the damage to the city had been fixed with an annoyed wave of the hand from that bitch Glynda.

 _"Hopefully the city council decides this is severe enough to hand the tournament over to Ironwood."_ Cinder thought to herself. If Ironwood isn't put in charge of the Vytal festival, that means she would have to organize another whole operation with Adam and his goons before the tournament, this time without Roman to do the grunt work.

Those morons didn't even manage to kill a single student. She had really been counting on at least one of Ozpin's students dying. That would've been the nail in the coffin. As she scanned the recently repaired courtyard she spied an opportunity to change fix that. Two of the students that had arrived to clean up standing by the smoking ruins of a paladin, which, conveniently for Cinder, ran on fire dust. It would be so tragic if the that dust canister caught fire. Combined with the blast from her own explosion, it should create a fireball big enough to engulf the entire courtyard.

Cinder smiled. " _Maybe I'll still manage to get a couple few after all."_ she thought as she raised her hand.

* * *

"I've never seen one of these in person. They look so cool!" Nora exclaimed as she stared at the smoking carcass of a paladin.

"How did they even get these?" Ren wondered "Atlas military isn't even using these in the field yet. They are still in the prototype stage."

"I wish they hadn't all been broken by the time we got here." Nora complained, mildly dejected. "I would've loved to fight one. Can you believe team RWBY fought one without us?" Ren simply shrugged, unenthused by the idea of fighting a paladin "I'm just glad they didn't do any damage to the city." Ren said.

Suddenly there was a very faint high pitched whistle, like the noise a tea kettle makes when it boils, and the metal canister containing all of the paladin's dust began to glow a dull red. Nora, having always been a quick thinker, realized what was about to happen and wrapped Ren in a bear hug in an effort to get the two of them to the ground, out of the blast radius.

Unfortunately she was just a bit too slow.

Just as Nora collided with Ren, the paladin erupted and sent the two of them spinning through the air and smashing through the window of a nearby convince store. The two of them slammed against the back wall and collapsed into a heap.

Ren groaned and clutched the back of his head. Wincing from the pain, he slowly opened his eyes, just barely able to recognize the blurry blue-eyed redhead on top of him. "Thanks for the save Nora." He muttered, still dazed from the impact.

Nora smiled, then coughed weakly and toppled over, collapsing on the ground.

"Nora?" Ren asked, panicked as sat up.

As his vision refocused, he realized just how badly Nora had been hurt. Large chunks of metal shrapnel from the explosion had impaled her left thigh, abdomen and right shoulder while the rest of her body was filled with smaller metal fragments. Her head and throat were filled glass shards, leacing her face disfigured. White shards of bone stuck out of her right leg, which had snapped like a twig. Her left arm and upper back had been charred black by the explosion. Blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth.

Ren pulled himself towards Nora and grabbed her by the shoulders. "No no no no. C'mon Nora!" Ren pleaded "Stay with me. I can't lose you too."

Ren's pleas were suddenly interrupted by loud coughing as Jaune stepped into the wrecked shop "Ren! Nora!" Jaune called out "Where are you…" Jaune stopped in his tracks when he saw Nora "Oh fuck." He whispered. He whipped his head around and called out "GLYNDA! I FOUND THEM! NORA'S HURT REAL BAD!"

Suddenly pieces of the wall began to fly away, opening to make way for Glynda as she quickly strolled through the new opening. With a wave of her wand, Ren was pushed back as the floor beneath Nora lifted upwards, forming a makeshift stretcher to carry Nora out of the building. "I GOT INJURED HERE! I need medical evac, STAT!" Glynda called out as Nora floated behind her out of the building.

Ren tried to push himself up, but before he even managed to stand a sudden lightheadedness overcame him and he was forced to sit down. " _Why does this bullshit always happen to me?"_ Ren asked to himself as he entered a staring match with the floor.

Jaune stumbled back through the wall towards Ren. He got down on one knee and grabbed Ren "Ren! We should get out of here. Are you injured? Can you walk?" he asked.

If Ren heard Jaune, he gave no indication of it "It's my fucking fault. It always is." Ren grumbled in a rare instance of profanity.

Jaune grabbed Ren's head and forced him to look into his eyes "Ren! Are you hurt?"

Ren sighed and looked down at his at his bloodstained chest "I'm covered in shards of glass and metal, I think I have a concussion and I've lost a fair amount of blood. So no."

Jaune scooped Ren off the ground "Alright buddy, I'll get you out of here and we can wait for a bullhead to take you to the hospital." he said as he slowly walked outside with Ren.

"Don't bother, I'll probably just get you killed too." Ren muttered bitterly under his breath.

The harsh sunlight caused Ren to flinch as Jaune carried him out of the wrecked shop. As his eyes readjusted to the light, Ren could just barely make out a group of people across the courtyard standing around a bullhead as it took off.

"Oh god, Ren!" Pyrrha shouted from across the courtyard. The cluster of people who had been standing by the bullhead noticed a limp Ren being carried in Jaune's arms.

"He's fine!" Jaune shouted across the courtyard in an attempt to ease their fears "Or at least I hope." he added as he set Ren down against the wall.

Ren slid down the wall until his head was inbetween his knees. Ren looked up, "Don't worry about me, how's Nora doing?" he asked as Pyrrha, RWBY Glynda and several other students gathered around him.

There was a moment of silence as everyone looked around, waiting for someone else to say something.

"I'm not going to lie to you." Glynda admitted "Nora's injuries are incredibly severe, she's lucky to be alive. I doubt she'll ever fully recover."

"But she'll be able to stay on our team right?" Ren asked with a hint of desperation in his voice.

Glynda sighed "As of right now I would say it looks unlikely. There have been several cases where a student has been injured so badly that they would always be a liability on the battlefield, even with prosthetics. None of them were injured as badly as Nora is. We'll provide the best medical treatment we can, but if Nora can't continue at Beacon we will take care of her housing situation until she can find a new, less demanding job."

Ren closed his eyes and tilted his head back " _Fuck."_ Ren thought to himself. Becoming a Huntress had been Nora's dream since she was 8. The thought of having to tell Nora that she couldn't stay at Beacon...

No. Ren couldn't let that happen. He wasn't going to let Nora be denied her dream because he had been sloppy. He would find a way for her to continue doing what she loved.

No matter what he had to do to make it happen.

* * *

Notes: Thank you for reading my second ever fic. As someone who loves odd couples Ren and Nora are easily my favorite RWBY characters and I have decided to fix the lack of slowburn Renora in the world. While this first chapter is super dark, I promise it will get lighter as I have some adorable Renora moments in mind. I'll be trying to add one more chapter a week.

Leave any tips or recommendations in the comments, I'm a new writer so any feedback is welcome. Especially feedback on what you think I could do better.

Cross posted from AO3.


	2. Guilt

_There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse._

 _\- Calvin and Hobbes_

* * *

Ren's foot tapped incessantly on the ground.

He had been discharged from the hospital after four hours. Nora had been in the operating room for the past nine, and all he knew was that she wasn't dead. Jaune, Pyrrha and the four members of team RWBY had been waiting there when he had gotten out, but by the time dinner rolled around RWBY had left and promised to come visit as soon as the hospital would allow Nora to have visitors. Jaune and Pyrrha had left at one point to get some food, but Ren had insisted that he had to stay in order to find out how Nora was doing as soon as possible and asked Jaune to bring him back some food.

"Ren, you should seriously consider getting some rest." Jaune mentioned "You really aren't looking good."

While Jaune may have been right, Ren didn't want to admit it since he cared far more about Nora's condition then his own and couldn't bear to go back to the JNPR dorm room without knowing how Nora was doing. "I'm fine. I already got some rest." Ren muttered aggressively.

"Passing out from blood loss on the ride over here doesn't count as getting some rest Ren." Pyrrha interjected, mildly frustrated with Ren's stubbornness. Ever since Nora had gotten injured Ren had become antagonistic, which is normally the last word anyone would use to describe Ren. "Nora wouldn't want you to be doing this."

"Hey Pyrrha, how about you mind your own..." Ren started to growl, before he was interrupted by the door to a nearby room, Nora's room, opening and out walked a tan man with medium length dark black hair and grey eyes. He carried a clipboard filled with notes and charts, and on his lab coat he wore a name tag that read "Dr. Paean, Trauma Surgeon".

Ren Jaune and Pyrrha all immediately stood up and started to move towards Dr. Paean, only for him to raise his hands "Whoa, easy there. I take it you're Miss Valkyrie's team?"

Jaune nodded "How is she doing?" he asked as he and the rest of his team sat down. "Well," Dr. Paean started "the good news is that she's alive and in no danger of dying." Ren winced at the doctor's words "That means the bad news is really bad, doesn't it?"

Paean sighed "It's pretty bad. The burn damage and the physical trauma had rendered her left hand completely useless and we had to amputate it just above the wrist. The glass shards had completely destroyed her right eye and damaged her vocal chords."

"Wait, her vocal chords were damaged?" Ren interrupted "How bad is it? Can she still talk?"

"As of right now she can just barely whisper." Paean responded "We'll be able to get her an artificial voice box from Atlas, as well as a new eye and a robotic hand. The eye and voice box are relatively simple and should get here in a couple of days. The hand however has to be custom made and that could take weeks or even months."

Ren sank further into his chair "Fuck." He muttered. Jaune turned to the doctor "What are her other injuries?"

Dr. Paean flipped through his notes "Let's see..." Paean said before rattling off Nora's list of injuries "Her liver was torn open by shrapnel, but it has been stitched back up and will heal over time. Her right tibia and fibula are broken, she was a mild concussion, five broken ribs, a collapsed lung, some very mild nerve damage, a hole in her right shoulder and her left thigh, burn damage over her entire left arm and upper back, and some mild internal bleeding."

There was a moment of silence as the remnants of team JNPR processed this new information.

"How long is it going to take her to recover?" Ren asked.

Paean shrugged "Hard to say with this many injuries. Individually none of her injuries would take her more than four months to fully recover from, but having to heal that many injuries at one time slows the recovery process down. I would say five months at a minimum before she can walk unassisted, assuming there are no complications and nothing gets infected. From there it could take years for her to get her to be in any condition to continue training at Beacon, if she ever does."

"Can we see her?" Jaune asked

Paean shook his head "I'm afraid not yet. For an injury this serious we only let close family see the patient for the first 24 hours, to prevent them from getting overwhelmed."

"Then I guess I'll go see her." Ren stated. Jaune and Pyrrha both gave him a confused look, but Dr. Paean just nodded "I take it you're Lie Ren? Nora was asking to see you."

"I thought you said she couldn't speak?" Pyrrha asked.

"She can't. We have given her a tablet and a pen so she can write down messages." Paean clarified. He turned back to Ren "Come with me."

Ren stood up "Let's go." He said eagerly and followed Dr. Paean back to Nora's room. As he opened the door, he turned to Jaune and Pyrrha "Don't wait up for me. You two should head back to the dorm." He stated, before closing the door behind him and leaving Jaune and Pyrrha behind in the waiting room.

Pyrrha turned to Jaune "Well, it's good to know she's doing okay." She paused "What was going on with Ren? I've never seen him angry like that before."

"Right after Nora got hurt he was saying some really dark stuff about how it always being his fault." Jaune said, pushing open the door the hospital lobby "I think he partially blames himself for what happened."

"Wow." Pyrrha said as the two of them walked past the front desk "Maybe you should talk to him about it? Or maybe we could ask Ozpin for some help?"

"Let's see how he does over the next couple of days." Jaune decided "If he doesn't get better, I'll talk to him."

There was a moment of silence between them as they exited the hospital.

"Are Ren and Nora actually related?" Pyrrha asked "They really don't look anything alike and they haven't brought it up before."

"I think they are just so close that they consider themselves to be family." Jaune said "I also don't think that they have any living relatives. The only relatives I've heard Ren talk about are his parents, but he did it in past tense. And I don't think Nora has ever mentioned any family."

"I guess that would explain why they are so close." Pyrrha hypothesized "I can't imagine what the two of them have been through."

* * *

Ren entered the cold white room with Dr. Paean. On the hospital bed lay Nora, although she was hardly recognizable. Her normal outfit had been replaced with an uncomfortable looking hospital gown, her left hand was now just a bandaged stump, dozens of fresh scars covered her body, her right eye was completely covered in bandages and an oxygen mask over her mouth. Several IV bags of varying sizes and colors were hooked up to her body.

The creak of the door closing behind them caused Nora's good eye to open. Despite her situation, her face still lit up at the sight of Ren. Ren returned her smile, but in truth seeing Nora like this made him want to punch a hole in the wall.

"How long can I stay here?" Ren asked.

"You can stay here until we need to operate again. Which shouldn't be until tomorrow afternoon." Paean responded, "There will be nurses coming in here to check up on her occasionally so you won't have complete privacy, but they'll be in and out in a couple of minutes and you don't need to talk to them."

Paean turned to Ren as he opened the door to leave "I'll give you two some peace and quiet." He whispered before letting the door close softly behind him.

The room was silent except for the soft beep of machines, which could normally only be said about a room with Nora in it if she was asleep. Ren turned back to Nora, feeling slightly guilty that Nora was this happy to see him. "If it wasn't for me she would be fine right now." Ren thought to himself as he sat down in a chair next to Nora's bed.

"Hey." Ren said quietly.

Nora smiled and scribbled out on her tablet "I missed you."

Ren wiped his eyes "I missed you too. How are you holding up?"

Nora hit the erase button and wrote a new message "They are giving me drugs for the pain, so I don't hurt anymore. Worst part is not being able to move/talk."

Ren put his hand on her arm "I talked with Dr. Paean. He told me we'll get you robotic

enhancements soon to fix your voice and replace your hand and eye."  
Nora erased her message and started writing again "Yeah. I'm just sad that it looks like I won't be

able to stay at Beacon with you."  
Ren clenched his teeth slightly before relaxing "Don't worry about that Nora. I've been thinking

and I have come up with a way for you to recover quickly. We'll be able to stay together."

Nora dropped her pen and looked at Ren. He could tell what she was thinking without having her write it down. "I'll tell you about it later." He responded to her questioning look. Ren yawned and rubbed his eyes "I'm just really tired. I'm just going to take a nap in this chair okay?"

Nora smiled and reached out and tapped Ren on the nose, mouthing the word "Boop" as she did. Ren smiled "Alright. I'll be here for you if you need anything."


End file.
